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RUNNING HEAD: microbiology and public health

Microbiological importance in the public health
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RUNNING HEAD: microbiology and public health

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Microbiological importance in public health
Microbiology is the study of all living microscopic organisms like the bacteria, viruses,
fungi, protozoa, and algae collectively referred to as the microbes. These microbes are too small
to be visible to the naked eye and therefore microscopes with special focusing lens are used in
the study. The microbes are a key to the balancing of the ecosystem and in the general needs of
human beings. For example, they help in nutrient cycling, help in identification and control of
diseases, controlling food spoilage and climate changes. The public health microbiology will
span across the fields of human, animal, food, water, and environmental microbiology with a
major focus on the human health and diseases. It mainly concentrates on the interpretation of
diagnostics at the population level rather than the individual patient level.
In this assignment, I shall restrict myself to the microbiological importance of ecology as
a sub-discipline of microbiology. This is one of the key areas of microbiology that will try to
determine the networks, interactions, and dynamics in the members of populations of microbes
and the human health. We can view the human body as a complex ecosystem while the human
health as a part of the outcome of all the ecosystem services delivered by the resident microbiota.
This is well confirmed by a microbiologist D.H Bergey who says that most of the human beings
organs and physiological functions in the human body will always be regulated by small
molecules that comes from the microbiota and now the microbiome is one of the determinants of
human or public health (Barton, & Northrup, 2008).
Further, Zhou et al (2006) stressed that each person has their own habitats that can be
subjected to and be made to respond to the variations in the surrounding environment. One thing
to note here is that, the diversity and dynamics of the microbial communities linked to these
habitats are always regulated by the interactions of the immune and nervous systems whereby the

RUNNING HEAD: micro...